I'm not saying that the two facts exclude a cause-effect relationship -- just that they're not sufficient to prove cause and effect.
It may be, for example, that it takes 2 years for the bullet to work it's way into the victim's spinal column.
On the other hand, it may be that the victim jumped off a bridge after accidentally running over their child.
A lot can happen in the space of 3 (or 300,000 ) years.
Without extra evidence it's almost silly to claim that either (or neither) branch is what happened.
Fox isn't always as stupid as they were with firefly -- just usually.
It's possible that Joss has added some kind of disclaimer about being able to regain copyright on the series if Fox doesn't run it for at least N seasons. That's what killed the Firefly resurrection -- Fox having a death-grip on the first shows made the whole project into something of a zombie -- nobody else was willing to take a risk only to have SCO reap all of the benefits.
It's like you shoot your friend in the back tonight, and (s)he dies in 2010. It's not that your friend no longer died after you fired the gun, but rather the 2-3 year wait kinda cancels the 'smoking gun' effect.
If, on the other hand, the prosecution produces evidence that you shot your friend in the head, and then your friend went into a coma for 2-3 years before dying, then they might still have good grounds for a murder charge.
Such a coma effect might be if we could show that the 300,000 years of increased vulcanism arose shortly after (and, thus, was probably caused by) the force of the Chicxulub impact.
Oh, and I'm of the opinion that the second impact near the main Chicxulub crater was simply a 'b' fragment of the larger asteroid...
It's much like the cheap hamburger patties that are made with 100% real beef - as opposed to the ones that are 100% real beef. I once saw a package of 12-grain bread that advertised that it was made with 100% whole wheat. I'll see if I can find the picture.
We shoot at ~390 megapixels using a 4x5 large format camera and specialized digital scanback. 390 megapixels is fine -- but is it just an RGB scan, or a full over-spectrum scan like for this article?
I've got a 10MegaPixel Point & Shoot camera that takes crap pictures compared to my 8MegaPixel SLR.
Not everybody in Nigeria is necessarily going to know who Bill Gates is -- and even somebody who did would probably look at the name and presume that (since it wasn't handled at the diplomatic level), this must refer to some other Bill Gates than the one we (here on slashdot) love to hate.
"and besides -- if it really is that Bill gates:
It should be easy enough to prove that he won't be a mooch on Nigerian social services, and
He has enough money to pay some lackey to handle this for him.
... and then, there's the geek factor of being able to say that "I told Bill Gates that he was too cheap to let into Nigeria."
well, as you pointed out -- those things have been in other OSs for years (decades even), but they haven't turned those OS's into resource hogs. yeah, those things are nice to have -- but if you like those features, why not just go to the OSes that are at the source of those features rather than a pretender who gives you those capabilities at the cost of speed and freedom.
With Vista, if the eye-candy is turned on, they run like molasses. Which begs (for) the question: What about if eye-candy is turned off? That's how we'd figure out if the problem is the eye candy or the DRM?
My current thesis is that the eye-candy is simply intended as camouflage for the way that DRM eats CPU cycles. (Not that it doesn't eat CPU in it's own right.)
The second [charge] relates to the collection or possession of information useful in the preparation of an act of terrorism. Oh my God... Nuke the universities!!!
Physics books...
Chemistry books....
English books (for preparing effective demands letters).
Photography and arts (for preparing terrorist training materials
Computing Science (for calculating the best mixtures)
We can extrapolate as to what would happen if we keep on at this rate.....
.81/.31 = 2.612... So we're actually almost tripling.
2.62^5=123
123*0.81= 99.63
so if we keep up at this rate, Linux will own 99.6% of the desktop market in 5 years.
No Wonder why Bill Gates is soiling his pants worrying about Linux.
.... And in six years, we'll have... uhm...
Oh, nevermind.
Re:business and government are run by aliens?
on
GAO Report Slams FCC
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· Score: 1
... and sat in on the meeting where MS reps offered him a rather substantial bribe if he would help make it go away Did anybody happen to have an audio recorder in that meeting, by chance?
Letting marketplace "competition" work for the public good has been a dismal failure. It works when there's real competition in the marketplace. When 2 or 3 companies own 80% of the stations in any market (and thus the editorial policies here), and 'little people' who want to get their views out on the airwaves get (legislatively) shoved out of the market, there is no competition (but there is a good deal of profit).
You can easily fake a postmark, or mail yourself an unsealed envelope and put what you want to in later.
If you put the stamp over the sealed side of the envelope such that you can't open the envelope without disturbing the postmark, then you have more reasonable proof that that was the date that it was sent.
Remember: civil cases are about balance of the probabilities, not beyond a reasonable doubt. Yes, it's better to have the landlord's signature, but don't roll over and play dead just because (s)he doesn't want to play ball.
OK. So I (help) write some software and give it to the world to use as Free Software.... Then some hardware manufacturer modifies that code so that they can dictate what I can do with my own software and they expect me to pay for that privilege.
So, when I modify the license so that these people who want to charge me to use my own code can't prevent me from meaningfully modifying my own code on the hardware that I'm paying them for, you want to explain to me how that's unfair? or even inconsistent with the the intent of the GPL?
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
If I can't install my new version of my software on the machine it was intended for, I can't meaningfully express freedoms 1 and/or 3.
The "or any future version" is optional for the developers. I have removed it from all of my software, as I do not want to license my code under rules which have not yet been written. from the GPL:
9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.
(emphasis mine)
In other words, if RMS decides to make the GPL7 with a copy of the Microsoft Vista EULA (or even the BSDL) -- Not only could you renounce it as 'not GPL' as envisioned in the license, but you could conceivably sue him for breach of trust/contract.
If price is an important detail, then you should wait 5 years for this to hit the mass market.
Speaking as someone who remembers paying $2500 for a 1GB drive (and that was with a 30% educational discount...
If that kind of I/O speed is important enough for a business, I can see them not only paying the $2400 for an 80GB drive, but buying 5 of them to put in a 4 disk raid-5 configuration with hot-swap spare. (because FLASH drives have a nasty history of dying after too many writes when used in place of an OS drive).
As long as the performance increase provides a business advantage, it's worth it... Think of it this way... that 5-disk configuration would cost them about the same as 1-2 months worth of wages for the senior sysadmin who's tasked with installing and maintaining it.
The purpose of security is not to prevent an intrusion. It is to make an intrusion difficult and dangerous enough that an expected attacker will prefer to find a 'softer' target.
A good example of that is presidential security.... How many millions (billions?) of dollars have gone into presidential security, yet attackers with minimum resources were still able to get through to Ronald Regan and Jimmy Carter.
That it's enough deterrent to deter most sane attackers is proven by the fact that nobody has had serious success in attacking George Bush Jr.
____
Chroot certainly doesn't, inherently, hurt security (except to the extent to which it gives some users a false sense of security). It does, however, provide an extra barrier to hackers who might trick (for example) FTP into doing something stupid -- they then need to do even more work to do damage outside of the processes' chroot jail.
It may not be foolproof, but it can provide enough of a barrier to cause an attacker to go find an easier target (which is, again, the real purpose of security).
Using chroot to contain root users, on the other hand is like having a maximum security prison with really secure doors -- remotely controlled with intelligent cameras, etc.... and an emergency key under every mat. As was mentioned by Cox: there are just so many holes in tha model that it's better to educate users about the impropriety than to try and fix what is an inherently broken process.
I would read the GPL as a promise not to sue for Copyright violation as long as you (agree to and really do) follow certain rules (make the source available) (this is the essence of a license). If you don't follow those rules, then you're limited to what copyright allows you (I.e. very little). If, in the absence of you following GPL rules, you do stuff that violates copyright (I.E. distribute my code), then I get to come down on you like a tun of bricks, and charge you with copyright violation.
an award of statutory damages for all infringements involved in the action, with respect to any one work, What I read here is that the BusyBox onwers would be entitled to a singular sum of up to $150K
The RIAA comes to their claims of millions of dollars because it's
$30K * 100 song titles == $30M
(each song title is a work, unless you consider all works available on the 'net to be one, big,compilation).
Where some schmuck makes 3 songs available that are downloaded by 1000 people, each and the RIAA claims
You can't only pay attention to those parts of a contract (or, in this case, a license) that you like, and expect a judge to side with you.
It's like if I said "If you pay me $1200/month, I'll let you live in my house". Then, once you move in you claim "I have possession of the house. Possession is 9/10ths of the law, piss off and go away" -- Besides, you gave me permission.
Although you may have possession, the underlying title still lies with me and, unless you abide by the rules that I set out as a prerequisite of allowing you access (or, in the case of GPL, use), you will ultimately get your head handed to me on a platter (as long my resources don't run out before the court case does). You can, like SCO, delay the final result, but you can't stop it unless, like SCO, you just die first.
They had an EULA which claimed that the code was theirs, and prohibited users from decompiling, etc. the code in the box.
Claiming the code is theirs is technically slander of title, but it's getting a lot closer to theft (appropriation) than people who make a Genesis song available on the net but make no bones about where it came from. (( the original point about theft vs infringment is still arguable, but I'd say that it's not the slam-dunk that was originally implied))
Once people brought up the point about the code being GPL, the support geek fell back to the EULA and claimed out that the people who found BusyBox had violated the EULA to determine that.
This is entirely repugnant to the letter, the spirit and even the raison d'etre of the GPL. It's not just a case of forgetting to put the source code up.
If these guys were to write busybox (and the rest of the Linux core, which was also appropriated) themselves, it would cost them somewhere between hundreds of thousands of dollars and millions of dollars. If they were to use Windows, they'd be paying through the nose to Microsoft and limited rights to customize it.
The value of the derivative code that comes from being required to make changes available is priceless. Linux is, at this time, probably 99% derivative code, and 1% original Linus code THAT is the kind synergistic value that the GPL can generate. These guys were freeloading off of the synergistic work of thousands of GPL/Linux programmers (not just busybox), while refusing to pay back the community who gave them this incredibely powerfull tool.
Probably 95%-99% of the code in that box was purloined GPL code. Between the SFLC, FSF and the Linux foundation (whatever name it now has), I think that these guys could legitimately be dinged for 90% of the price of what they were selling -- and that's before you take into account punitive damages.
The Copyright act explicitly allows for the making available of your works in return for access to mine. The fact that this doesn't entail any direct money exchange is probably part of the reason why statutory damages were included in the copyright act -- specifically to preclude this kind of logical flag-waving.
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It may be, for example, that it takes 2 years for the bullet to work it's way into the victim's spinal column. On the other hand, it may be that the victim jumped off a bridge after accidentally running over their child.
A lot can happen in the space of 3 (or 300,000 ) years. Without extra evidence it's almost silly to claim that either (or neither) branch is what happened.
It's possible that Joss has added some kind of disclaimer about being able to regain copyright on the series if Fox doesn't run it for at least N seasons. That's what killed the Firefly resurrection -- Fox having a death-grip on the first shows made the whole project into something of a zombie -- nobody else was willing to take a risk only to have SCO reap all of the benefits.
If, on the other hand, the prosecution produces evidence that you shot your friend in the head, and then your friend went into a coma for 2-3 years before dying, then they might still have good grounds for a murder charge.
Such a coma effect might be if we could show that the 300,000 years of increased vulcanism arose shortly after (and, thus, was probably caused by) the force of the Chicxulub impact.
Oh, and I'm of the opinion that the second impact near the main Chicxulub crater was simply a 'b' fragment of the larger asteroid...
... Because now you can have a Beowulf cluster of solar panels?
390 megapixels is fine -- but is it just an RGB scan, or a full over-spectrum scan like for this article?
I've got a 10MegaPixel Point & Shoot camera that takes crap pictures compared to my 8MegaPixel SLR.
Have you explained to your teachers the advantages of using OpenOffice? (better, smaller, cheaper ($0) for students, etc. etc. etc)
Delicious, isn't it?
well, as you pointed out -- those things have been in other OSs for years (decades even), but they haven't turned those OS's into resource hogs. yeah, those things are nice to have -- but if you like those features, why not just go to the OSes that are at the source of those features rather than a pretender who gives you those capabilities at the cost of speed and freedom.
My current thesis is that the eye-candy is simply intended as camouflage for the way that DRM eats CPU cycles. (Not that it doesn't eat CPU in it's own right.)
...is if he plans to give away Vista CDs. Don't tell me -- he's so desperate that he hired the AOL PR crew to increase the market for Vista?!-
Physics books...
-
Chemistry books....
-
English books (for preparing effective demands letters).
-
Photography and arts (for preparing terrorist training materials
- Computing Science (for calculating the best mixtures)
- Human Kinetics (to learn how to carry the bomb).
(you might as well burn the libraries, too).2.62^5=123
123*0.81= 99.63
so if we keep up at this rate, Linux will own 99.6% of the desktop market in 5 years.
No Wonder why Bill Gates is soiling his pants worrying about Linux.
... and sat in on the meeting where MS reps offered him a rather substantial bribe if he would help make it go away Did anybody happen to have an audio recorder in that meeting, by chance?I just wanted to make that explicit.
Remember: civil cases are about balance of the probabilities, not beyond a reasonable doubt. Yes, it's better to have the landlord's signature, but don't roll over and play dead just because (s)he doesn't want to play ball.
So, when I modify the license so that these people who want to charge me to use my own code can't prevent me from meaningfully modifying my own code on the hardware that I'm paying them for, you want to explain to me how that's unfair? or even inconsistent with the the intent of the GPL?
(I point you now, to freedoms 1 and 3:
-
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. If I can't install my new version of my software on the machine it was intended for, I can't meaningfully express freedoms 1 and/or 3.In other words, if RMS decides to make the GPL7 with a copy of the Microsoft Vista EULA (or even the BSDL) -- Not only could you renounce it as 'not GPL' as envisioned in the license, but you could conceivably sue him for breach of trust/contract.
Speaking as someone who remembers paying $2500 for a 1GB drive (and that was with a 30% educational discount...
If that kind of I/O speed is important enough for a business, I can see them not only paying the $2400 for an 80GB drive, but buying 5 of them to put in a 4 disk raid-5 configuration with hot-swap spare. (because FLASH drives have a nasty history of dying after too many writes when used in place of an OS drive).
As long as the performance increase provides a business advantage, it's worth it... Think of it this way... that 5-disk configuration would cost them about the same as 1-2 months worth of wages for the senior sysadmin who's tasked with installing and maintaining it.
A good example of that is presidential security.... How many millions (billions?) of dollars have gone into presidential security, yet attackers with minimum resources were still able to get through to Ronald Regan and Jimmy Carter.
That it's enough deterrent to deter most sane attackers is proven by the fact that nobody has had serious success in attacking George Bush Jr.
____
Chroot certainly doesn't, inherently, hurt security (except to the extent to which it gives some users a false sense of security). It does, however, provide an extra barrier to hackers who might trick (for example) FTP into doing something stupid -- they then need to do even more work to do damage outside of the processes' chroot jail.
It may not be foolproof, but it can provide enough of a barrier to cause an attacker to go find an easier target (which is, again, the real purpose of security).
Using chroot to contain root users, on the other hand is like having a maximum security prison with really secure doors -- remotely controlled with intelligent cameras, etc.... and an emergency key under every mat. As was mentioned by Cox: there are just so many holes in tha model that it's better to educate users about the impropriety than to try and fix what is an inherently broken process.
I would read the GPL as a promise not to sue for Copyright violation as long as you (agree to and really do) follow certain rules (make the source available) (this is the essence of a license). If you don't follow those rules, then you're limited to what copyright allows you (I.e. very little). If, in the absence of you following GPL rules, you do stuff that violates copyright (I.E. distribute my code), then I get to come down on you like a tun of bricks, and charge you with copyright violation.
The RIAA comes to their claims of millions of dollars because it's
(each song title is a work, unless you consider all works available on the 'net to be one, big,compilation).Where some schmuck makes 3 songs available that are downloaded by 1000 people, each and the RIAA claims
, I'd say that they're just blowing hot air.It's like if I said "If you pay me $1200/month, I'll let you live in my house". Then, once you move in you claim "I have possession of the house. Possession is 9/10ths of the law, piss off and go away" -- Besides, you gave me permission.
Although you may have possession, the underlying title still lies with me and, unless you abide by the rules that I set out as a prerequisite of allowing you access (or, in the case of GPL, use), you will ultimately get your head handed to me on a platter (as long my resources don't run out before the court case does). You can, like SCO, delay the final result, but you can't stop it unless, like SCO, you just die first.
Claiming the code is theirs is technically slander of title, but it's getting a lot closer to theft (appropriation) than people who make a Genesis song available on the net but make no bones about where it came from. (( the original point about theft vs infringment is still arguable, but I'd say that it's not the slam-dunk that was originally implied))
Once people brought up the point about the code being GPL, the support geek fell back to the EULA and claimed out that the people who found BusyBox had violated the EULA to determine that.
This is entirely repugnant to the letter, the spirit and even the raison d'etre of the GPL. It's not just a case of forgetting to put the source code up.
If these guys were to write busybox (and the rest of the Linux core, which was also appropriated) themselves, it would cost them somewhere between hundreds of thousands of dollars and millions of dollars. If they were to use Windows, they'd be paying through the nose to Microsoft and limited rights to customize it.
The value of the derivative code that comes from being required to make changes available is priceless. Linux is, at this time, probably 99% derivative code, and 1% original Linus code THAT is the kind synergistic value that the GPL can generate. These guys were freeloading off of the synergistic work of thousands of GPL/Linux programmers (not just busybox), while refusing to pay back the community who gave them this incredibely powerfull tool.
Probably 95%-99% of the code in that box was purloined GPL code. Between the SFLC, FSF and the Linux foundation (whatever name it now has), I think that these guys could legitimately be dinged for 90% of the price of what they were selling -- and that's before you take into account punitive damages.
The Copyright act explicitly allows for the making available of your works in return for access to mine. The fact that this doesn't entail any direct money exchange is probably part of the reason why statutory damages were included in the copyright act -- specifically to preclude this kind of logical flag-waving.